Australian Catholics prepare for Pope's environment statement as draft leaks

Pope Francis is preparing to declare humans as primarily responsible for climate change, call for fossil fuels to be replaced by renewable energy and decry the culture of consumerism, a leaked draft of his much anticipated statement on the environment suggests.

The document - known as an encyclical, a papal teaching letter - will likely cause significant discussion among Australia's 5.4 million Catholics - from bishops to those in political office, such as Prime Minister Tony Abbott and opposition leader Bill Shorten.

But Pope Francis has said he hopes that the encyclical will also reach a wider audience. The draft explicitly addresses "everyone regarding our common home".

Professor of theology at the Australian Catholic University, Neil Ormerod, told Fairfax Media the statement would clearly put environmental issues at the forefront of the Pope's expectations for Catholic institutions and the church.

"There has been a tendency by some in the church to be dismissive of environmental issues, and to see it as not a legitimate form of Catholic participation in civil society," Professor Ormerod said.

"Well that's now gone."

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The hotly anticipated statement - which is titled Laudato Si or Be Praised - was due to be released on Thursday evening Australian time. But embarrassingly for the Vatican, an Italian magazine published a 192-page draft version overnight Tuesday.

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Parts of the draft were then translated from Italian to English by media outlets. There is no official Vatican translation to emerge and expert observers warned that reading the document outside its full context could be misleading.

Australian Catholic hierarchy and groups would not comment on the draft after a furious reaction from the Vatican about the leak. Events in Australia have been planned for coming days in anticipation of the document's formal release, and the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, is expected to hold a press conference on Friday morning.

In the draft, Pope Francis backs the broad finding of global scientists that climate change is predominantly caused by human activity such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

The draft opens by declaring climate change as a protest by the Earth for "irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God placed in her".

"Numerous scientific studies indicate that the major part of global warming in recent decades is due to the high concentration of greenhouse gas … emitted above all because of human activity," the draft also says, according to translations by media outlets.

The pope calls for people to move away from consumerism and live more simple lives to stop the depletion of resources. He points to the impact environmental degradation has on the poor.

"Today we cannot help but recognize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach, which must integrate justice in the discussions of the environment, to hear the cry of the earth as much as the cry of the poor," the draft says.

At times it doubles as an economic statement, and Pope Francis decries the maximisation of profits as a "conceptual distortion of the economy" that fails to account for the environment, according to The New York Times.

Pope Francis is not the first pope to make significant statements on the environment and climate change, but this is the first encyclical dedicated to the topic. The document also appears deliberately timed to influence the lead up to a major climate change summit in Paris in November.

Some United State commentators have also interpreted the document as an attempt from a popular Pope to sway conservative Catholic politicians who are reluctant to readily embrace environmental protection, something which could also apply in Australia.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said Mr Abbott had always maintained that climate change is real, mankind does make a contribution and it was important to have a policy to deal with it, pointing to the Direct Action plan.